Trinamool Congress rubbishes Mukul Roy’s allegation

TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee called Roy a "traitor" and accused him of "acting as an agent of the BJP in the party (TMC)" and "trying to weaken it in order to save himself from the clutches of the CBI".

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday rubbished the allegation levelled by its former leader Mukul Roy against the party and accused him of acting as a BJP agent to save himself from the CBI, which is investigating the Narada and Saradha cases, in which his name has cropped up. Roy, who quit the TMC and his Rajya Sabha seat on Wednesday, said after his resignation that all the members in a political party should be comrades and not servants. “But, the one-man parties do not work like that,” he added.

TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee called Roy a “traitor” and accused him of “acting as an agent of the BJP in the party (TMC)” and “trying to weaken it in order to save himself from the clutches of the CBI”. “Why is he (Roy) levelling these completely baseless allegations now? If he was against the decisions of the party, he could have left it long ago. Who had stopped him? He is levelling these allegations to please the BJP, so that they induct him,” he told reporters here.

Chatterjee, who is also a minister in the West Bengal government, refuted the allegation that TMC leaders were treated as servants in the party as “untrue” and said in politics, everyone had a role model and in the TMC, that role model was Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. “We are followers of Mamata Banerjee. Nobody is a servant in the party,” he added.

Countering the claims made by Roy that he had met former Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Ashok Singhal on behalf of Banerjee, Chatterjee alleged, “He (Roy) is lying blatantly. He was never asked to meet any VHP or BJP leader. He had done it on his own.”

The TMC leader claimed that Roy would slide into oblivion as “he is neither a mass leader nor does he have a mass base”. “He had contested the Assembly election only once in 2001 and lost. He became a leader only because Mamata Banerjee was behind him,” he added.